If you are a serious digital photographer you probably have a good D-SLR camera. And you expect it will capture sharp, finely focused, high-quality photographic images. It follows that the display you choose should be capable of reproducing all the attributes and qualities your camera has recorded. Most of the displays sold with computers in box stores, however, are not much better at reproducing photographs than the old-type big and heavy CRTs we had back in the mid-1990s.

We’ve all covered the front of a lens with sandwich wrap or a nylon stocking and created a DIY special effects filter at one time or another. Maybe you’ve even smeared an old UV or Skylight with Vaseline or crayon wax to produce creative distortion. Cool, no? Well, those are NOTHING compared to the incredible optical tricks you can do with the new Omni Creative Filter System from Lensbaby.

An effective camera support that could be used as a pillow when you snooze in the back of your pickup truck in a pinch? Hard to believe? Take my word for it—this thing is as sensible as it is functional.

LG Electronics is the first to offer a new pro-graphics LCD display with LED backlighting. It also has the wide Adobe RGB color width, and will adjust to the lower 80.0 CD/m2 white luminance to provide color-managed printing brightness. The new display is optimized for Microsoft Windows with WQHD 2560x1440 resolution and multitasking windows, “dependent on content, device, interface and/or graphics card,” according to LG. The 27” diagonal size has a base physical resolution of 1920x1080 pixel resolution that may be doubled by the software driver with some PC systems running Windows.

The LitraPro is a compact, rechargeable, high-output LED light source that offers a broad spectrum of color temperature settings and is fully dimmable from 0% to 100%. The LitraPro operates up to 45 minutes at the highest power setting and, should you land on it when you fall into a 90-feet deep swimming pool, no problem—it won’t break or suffer water damage. Sounds incredible, no?

This January issue’s theme was outdoor photography and other than architectural interiors and studio photography, more images are probably captured out of doors than indoors. This column’s focus is on camera bags for landscape, nature, and wildlife shooters, whose needs are different from their urban counterparts. Kelly Moore, for example, manufactures fashion bags (see the December 2016 Geared Up column) and offers the beautifully crafted Woodstock Backpack ($229) that’s probably better suited for Rodeo Drive than Jellystone Park.

When people asked legendary editor Herbert Keppler why he sometimes wrote about cameras costing more than the average photographer could afford, he told me it was because of the Maserati factor. “Most people,” he said, “can’t afford a Maserati but like reading about them.” And I get that. My personal dream car is a 1961 Maserati 3500 GT, which sells for north of $450,000. Fortunately, medium format cameras, while expensive, cost less than that.

There’s more to black-and-white photography than an absence of color. One reason purists refer to black-and-white images as “monochrome” is that it’s a more precise term covering photographs made in sepia and other tones.

Here are the rules: every item described herein is small enough to fit inside a reasonably normal stocking and each is something that every photographer will appreciate. Price was not part of the selection process, nor was foot size.

There are several ways to trigger a camera wirelessly but up until recently none of them conveniently gave Nikon D600 shooters a large-screen remote live view. Enter the Nikon WU-1b Wireless Mobile Adapter that operates with “smart” devices—namely iOS and Android tablets and phones, in conjunction with the Nikon Wireless Mobile Adapter Utility app. The device is a tiny Wi-Fi 11b/g/n dongle about the size of the tip of your thumb and connects to the camera’s USB port. It even comes with a short lanyard and protective case, so you can keep it attached to the camera strap. I tested it with a third-generation Apple iPad with Retina display. Read on, as you’ll find important tips here that are not found in the instructions. (Note: WU-1b also works with the Nikon 1 V2; model WU-1a is currently available for the Nikon D3200.)

For many photographers, the notebook computer has become nearly as essential as an SLR camera. But that doesn’t mean that photographers are just as savvy about their PCs and MacBooks as they are their cameras and lenses.

I realized the importance of taking location notes years back when preparing a large selection of slides for a stock agency. I was going through my “Italy” file and began to segregate out images of church interiors. Spectacular and, at the time I shot them, unforgettable locales quickly turned into a confusion of altars, statues, and naves, most of which I couldn’t honestly...

Many years ago, along with some fellow writers, I visited an Agfa—remember them?—facility in Brussels. During the tour one of the leaders asked, “What do you think of the idea of adding a phone to a digital camera?” We all laughed and thought it was the dumbest idea we’d ever heard. It turned out that he was asking the wrong question; it should have been, “What do you think of adding a camera to a phone?”

PocketWizard’s G Wiz Vault: The Vault is a small gear bag that features three movable (or removable) hook-n-loop padded dividers that allow photographers to customize the bag to fit their needs for each photo shooot. It is available in three colors: black, blue and orange.